Landry Family in Lafayette, Louisiana

When I was growing up, I always thought of the Landry family as being from Lake Charles, Louisiana.  That’s where my dad (Robert Joseph Landry, Jr. – Bob – Pluto) was born and where he grew up.  My parents (Bob and Betty Lou Bucklin Landry) settled in Jennings, Louisiana, and that’s where my siblings and I grew up.  Almost all of my Landry cousins lived in Lake Charles, so it made sense to me:  The Landry family was from Lake Charles – always and forever – amen. 

But that wasn’t really true then and it is even less so now.  What I was aware of when I was a kid were my own first cousins.  There were so many of us.  Then there were the Bouquets.  That was a family group from my dad’s first cousin.  They were a big family, too.  I didn’t really know how we were related, but I knew they were cousins.  Trying to explain it now still gets me confused.  There were so many cousin marriages in that part of the family.

When I started collecting photos and exploring family connections, I was surprised at how many cousins lived in Lafayette.  My Mee Maw (paternal grandmother Germaine Erie Patureau Landry) was born in Plaquemine and grew up there, but ended up in Lake Charles after she was married to her mom’s first cousin Robert Joseph Landry, Sr.  I knew she lived in Lafayette for a while, but didn’t know the details.  I found out that her dad (Vincent Maximilian Patureau) had moved to Lafayette in 1912 and started a veterinarian practice there.

He moved close to where his mother-in-law Mrs. P. M. Babin lived.  You remember her, right?  That was my great great grandmother Marie Amelie “Belite” Bujol Landry Babin.  She was my Mee Maw’s grandmother.  She had moved there a few years earlier with her second husband Magloire Babin (Her first husband was Trasimond Landry).  Mack Babin died in 1919 in Lafayette.  Belite must have decided to move in with other family members at that point, because in the 1920 Census she is in the household of her daughter Clemence Babin Landry.

The topic of this post came about from the first photo that I posted.  It is not a photo of my great great grandmother Belite, it is a photo of my great grandmother Marie Celeste Leveque Landry.  Sorry about the confusion.  They were first cousins by their Landry mothers.  I wish I had a photo of them together, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.  So when I was exploring the photo of Grandma Celeste with her Landry offspring, I remembered that she ended up living in Lafayette at some point as well.  I was assuming that I would find her in the household of Louis. 

I did find her in Lafayette in the 1930 Census, but she was in the household of her other son Sebastien Landry.  What was he doing there?  He was the Landry patriarch of the Bouquet family that I mentioned being in Lake Charles.  That just seems wrong, but then I discovered that he moved back to Lake Charles by 1935.  His mother died in 1934 and was buried in Lake Charles.  He probably moved back to be near his daughter and grandchildren.

Since he and his offspring lived in Lake Charles along with my dad and his siblings, those were the family members that we knew.  Louis Joseph and Clemence’s offspring did not live there, so the families lost touch.  It’s what happens when family moves around.  Maybe one day one of my sibling’s grandchildren will wonder,  “Didn’t Grandma (or Grandpa or whatever cool name they came up with) have a brother that did some family research?  I wonder if he ever found anything interesting?”

That grandchild will search for my name, find this story, and say, “Boy, that guy sure does ramble a lot!”